See what’s new in Character Animator.

Check out all the latest features in Character Animator CC. You’ll always have access to new features and updates as soon as they’re released.

Character Animator CC

Oct182017

New Triggers panel

Show, hide, swap, or cycle through different parts of your puppet with your keyboard or MIDI device. The new Triggers panel gives you one place for all your triggers and an easy, intuitive way to move your characters. Toggle triggers on and off or create swap sets to quickly change hand position or cycle between outfits.

New Controls panel

The new Controls panel makes performing easier and more visual. It displays triggers and puppet properties as buttons and sliders — you don’t have to remember a key command to trigger movements or swap layers. It automatically generates button designs from your artwork. And it’s saved with your character and can be shared with others.

Eyebrow and eye animation improvement

Added rotation and movement to eyebrows gives you more expressive characters, from worried to angry to surprised and more. And a new Snap Eye Gaze feature gives you more control of pupil movement.See how it works ›

Pose-to-pose animation

A new pose-to-pose option smooths out the transitions between your character’s poses for a hand-animated look. Control the amount of smoothing and how long to hold each pose.

New behaviors: Physics, Layer Picker, and Fader

Trigger a specific layer in a puppet or group with Layer Picker. Fader lets you hide or show specific parts of your puppet. New Physics behaviors include Collision, which enables your puppet to run into and bounce against environmental elements or another puppet.

Better aligned audio

Waveform displays give you a visual method for aligning audio, and you have roundtrip support with Adobe Audition CC.

Better lip-sync accuracy

Mouth shapes match more accurately to corresponding sounds with the new lip-sync algorithm. Lip syncs (including edits) created in Character Animator can be copied and pasted into Adobe After Effects CC.See how it works ›

Rigging and UI enhancements

MIDI device controls

Control your puppet with a MIDI device, not just your mouse and keyboard.

And so much more

Also includes: Improved walk behavior that supports the bending of toes when walking, visemes that can be edited using keyboard shortcuts, and more.See full release notes ›

Character Animator CC (Beta)

Apr192017

Walk cycles

Make your character walk by simply tagging its legs, arms, and body in a single profile pose. Choose strides like Walk, Run, and Sneak, and they’ll automatically adapt to different leg lengths and step speeds. Feet touch down at ground level whether your character walks in place or across the scene.See how it works ›

Viseme editor

Make the mouth shape of your puppet correspond more precisely to recorded or pre-recorded audio, and easily fix lip-sync mistakes.

Live streaming on Facebook or YouTube

Send your character to an external device or second monitor using Mercury Transmit, which now supports both Mac and Windows. Connect to streaming applications to broadcast your character on Facebook Live or YouTube Live, or use multiple machines to output multiple characters that interact with each other in a live production.

Blending modes

Enhance your puppet's appearance by controlling how a layer interacts with the layers beneath it. Highlight eyes, shade body parts, and more using blending modes created in Photoshop CC.

Workspaces

Move through the animation process with four workspaces that give you the tools you need for each step of the way. Use Start to design your puppet from a template, Rig to animate your puppet, Record to create voiceover and movement, and Stream to create professional live output.

Puppet mouth improvements

Simple animated mouths are now more expressive — they widen according to the loudness of your voiceover, and you can rotate the jaws clockwise and counterclockwise.

Share via Creative Cloud

Support for more asset types

Import PNG sequences and SVG files from Adobe Animate CC to use in your Character Animator projects.

Character Animator CC (Preview)

Jun202016

Simpler character movement

Now you can quickly tag puppet layers and record multiple takes of a character’s movement. Plus, control how each child moves with its parent using new Weld, Hinge, and Free puppet attachments.

Motion trigger and auto-blink behaviors

Drag your characters across the screen and they’ll automatically animate according to how you move them.

Export real-time animations

Send live feeds of your animations over the air via any Syphon client.

Adobe Media Encoder export

Export your scene to any format without intermediate rendering using Adobe Media Encoder.

Character Animator CC (Preview)

Nov302015

Multi-Touch support

Use your fingertips to animate a character’s limbs and record the movements on a touch display.

Expanded language support

The Character Animator interface is now available in German, Japanese, and French, as well as English.

Character Animator CC (Preview)

Jun152015

Animate your 2D artwork

Bring your Illustrator or Photoshop characters to life by using simple keyboard actions and automated features to track your facial movements, record voiceover, and trigger body movements. Edit your artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator, and it will automatically update in Character Animator.

Characters that match your mood

Capture your facial expressions and emotions with your webcam. You can then control the position, scale, and rotation of your character’s facial features with your webcam, voice and keyboard.

Automatic lip-sync

Character Animator automatically captures your voice and mimics your mouth movements for effortless lip-syncing. All you have to do is speak into your microphone.

Trigger expressions with your keyboard

Make your characters as lifelike as possible using simple keyboard actions that trigger blinks, wrinkle lines, and more.

Make characters breathe

Automatically add realistic breathing motions, and even control breaths per minute.

Realistic mouth movements

No need to create additional mouth artwork in Photoshop or Illustrator. Just open and close your mouth in front of your webcam to make your character’s mouth move and talk.

Restrict movement

Specify which parts of your character move and which parts stay still to make it stretch or bend in realistic ways.

Easily animate limbs

Use your mouse to make your character wave or move by dragging one limb away from the rest of the puppet.

Secondary movements

Make your characters more lifelike by having multiple parts of their bodies react to their surroundings. Simulate wind blowing through hair, earrings dangling, wings flapping, and more.

Add particle effects

Set the scene by using Particle Mode to generate falling snow, rain, cannon fire, and more.

Create multiple takes

Record a puppet’s performance and play it back on the Timeline. Place multiple puppets in your scene and record separate tracks of dialogue for each one. Each puppet instance appears as a track item that you can trim or shift in time.